More than two millennia after it was toppled by an earthquake, the Colossus of Rhodes - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - is to rise again.

Instead of standing astride the venerable port of Rhodes town, however, the 100ft bronze figure will tower over the island's downmarket resort of Faliraki, infamous for the drunken antics of thousands of British tourists who go there every year.

Faliraki, about five miles south of Rhodes town, boasts a strip of bars and clubs a third of a mile long, where cut-price alcohol lures hordes of tourists on drinking binges and pub crawls.

Undeterred, a British-based Greek artist, Nikos Kotziamanis, has assembled a 10-strong Colossus team, including landscapers and structural engineers, who will ensure that it can stand up to the earthquakes which affect the region of Rhodes today.

"Rhodes occasionally suffers earthquakes of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale," Mr Kotziamanis said. "But we have a seismologist and are designing the new Colossus to be able to withstand much stronger shocks. The idea is that the new statue doesn't suffer the same fate as the old one."

Few details are known of the original Colossus of Rhodes, which was built by a local sculptor between 304 and 292BC and whose face was reputedly modelled on that of Alexander the Great. It was destroyed little more than half a century later.

Pliny the Elder recorded that before they were sold off, the surviving fragments attracted the awe of onlookers.

"Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms,'' he wrote, "and its fingers are larger than most statues."

Faliraki's mayor, Iannis Iatridis, said: "The Colossus was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The new statue will be the miracle of the 21st century."

Greek designers have long dreamed of rebuilding the Colossus. Permission has never been granted, however, to restore the statue to its original location, even with the support of politicians including the former prime minister, Andreas Papandreou.

According to superstition dating back thousands of years, the Delphic oracle warned islanders not to rebuild the Colossus after it was destroyed. That has not, however, scared off Mr Iatridis, who has claimed the project as his own, describing it as "the finishing touch to complete beautiful Faliraki".

"Faliraki is a very beautiful place and it's irrelevant that British people see it as a place to get drunk," he said. "What we're doing is for future generations."

Mr Kotziamanis said: "I'm sure it won't come to be seen as an icon for British drunkenness. I think they will see this in a different way. This will not be a theme-park caricature but a genuine achievement for the 21st century."

Scholars and devotees of the classical world are likely to be less enthusiastic, given Faliraki's seedier claim to contemporary fame.

Nelina Filimonos, director of the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes, said that she supported neither the statue, nor its proposed site.

"We are against this project. We know very little about the original statue and so we don't think we have enough information to build a new Colossus," she said.

"There are more important things to be done, and putting it in Faliraki is a gross distortion of history." Mr Kotziamanis plans to cast each section of the monument in his foundry, in London Docklands, before shipping them to Rhodes.

"It will be like the Statue of Liberty, which was crafted and assembled in France before being taken apart and shipped to New York," he said.

His designs resemble a male counterpart to the New York landmark, itself supposedly an echo of the Colossus, and the completed statue will bear a crown and carry a torch. Work is due to begin next month, when Mr Kotziamanis will lead a survey team to Faliraki. Once construction is under way, the £35 million project will take a further four years to complete.

Mr Iatridis said that funding would come from companies eager to be associated with the landmark. Because of Greek bureaucracy, however, ob&#8208;taining building permits could take at least a year, he said.

Few details are known of the original Colossus of Rhodes, which was built by a local sculptor between 304 and 292BC and whose face was reputedly modelled on that of Alexander the Great. It was destroyed little more than half a century later.

I've never quite understood why something that only stood for a few decades could be considered one of the seven wonders wonders of the world.

It was a remarkable work for its time.Finished in hammered sheet copper it must have been spectacular.Still debated if it stood astride the harbor entrance or on a single pedestal,most opt for the latter now. I believe it was the inspiration for our own Statue of Liberty.

Thanks, waggs. It was picked for the "Seven Wonders" list while it was still around; also, it remained a tourist attraction after it fell, and it was there in a pile for centuries, until sold for scrap. The other "wonders" mostly didn't make the trip out of antiquity -- the only ones still in existence are the Giza pyramids, and offhand I'd say that the only other one to make it into the Middle Ages was the Pharos. Also, it seems that the list was probably compiled by someone who never got to see at least some of them, and who relied instead on other eyewitness accounts.

This is nothing like those who completed Leonardo's bronze horse for Florence. They had his sketches to work from and that was only not finished because the material was needed for wartime.

some quibbles follow:

The Leonardo horses stand in three places, one of which is not Florence.

Leo's sketches of the horse aren't very detailed.

Leo completed the clay model, and then dallied. At some point, the Milanese had to use all available bronze to cast cannon, in order to defend themselves against the French.

Two of the full-scale horses (without the rider planned in the Leonardo original) were cast; one was presented to Milan, the other is just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the Meijer Gardens (Fred coughed up the dough to do the work); the eight-foot proof of concept used to stand along the walkway out to the big horse, but has since been donated somewhere (dunno where). I wouldn't care much, but the NY Slimes did a hatchet job on the project, as it did on the Perugino exhibition the local art museum hosted in the late 1990s.

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